Enslaved Unveil New Album Title and Artwork

Norwegian progressive black metal band Enslaved have named their twelfth studio album Riitiir and have unveiled the album’s artwork, which was created by Truls Espedal and can be viewed below. Riitiir is due out in Europe on September 28th and in North America on October 2nd through Nuclear Blast.

From the woods in Sweden, Enslaved guitarist/songwriter/founding member Ivar BjÃ¸rnson shares the following: “The album is, as mentioned, entitled Riitiir – a self-made ‘Norse-ified’ version of the words ‘Rites’ / ‘Rituals.’ RIITIIR = ‘The Rites of Man,’ to put it in a formulaic and easy way. There is no story with a timeline; again we’ve built structures that lay above the independent lyrics that we feel more comfortable with letting the reader explore, interpret, or simply discard themselves. It is entirely up to them. Meanwhile, we are extremely excited to see what visual artist and collaborator Truls Espedal has come up with this time. The collaboration between him, myself, and Grutle Kjellson was closer, more understanding and powerful this time than ever before in our more than decade-long cooperation. The album concept and our feelings connected to it hit home instantly with Truls, in the same way that his initial ideas resonated intensely with us from the second he shared them with us. We will, of course, discuss some key concepts and potential interpretations in deeper song-by-song analysis – but let’s cross that rainbow when we get there.”